Shootout vs. Clemson not in USC's best interests

Wednesday

Nov 21, 2012 at 9:05 PM

Getting into a track meet with the high-powered Tigers likely a losing proposition for Gamecocks.

By ERIC BOYNTON eric.boynton@shj.com

It’s easy and downright enjoyable to reminisce about the days of yesteryear, when coach Steve Spurrier couldn’t wait to puff out his chest and dare anybody in the land to come and engage his offense in an old-fashioned shootout.While the Ol’ Ball Coach has lost little of his brashness during his 67 years, and deep down inside he’d probably cherish attempting to set the scoreboard on tilt Saturday when South Carolina visits Clemson, he didn’t forge a certain hall-of-fame career by playing to the whims of his opponents.He’ll have his normal allotment of tricks up his sleeve, including probably a little something or other drummed up specifically for his archrival, but don’t look for him to lose sight of what successfully brought him to this dance.Even without injured star tailback Marcus Lattimore (for a second consecutive year against the Tigers) and with versatile and mobile quarterback Connor Shaw nursing an injured foot, Spurrier understands he doesn’t have the horses to engage in a scoring bonanza with Clemson’s superior skill guys.“I just know they’ve scored a whole bunch,” Spurrier said during his weekly news conference. “They could be scoring in the 80s on some of the guys, but they shut it down. To have a chance against them we have to try to sort of do what Stanford did against Oregon (in a 17-14 upset). I don’t know what they did, but somehow or another they held those guys down. You try to limit the possessions if you can. If you go out there and throw every down the way some of their opponents have, you’re going to give them a lot of possessions and the opportunity to score a bunch.“We know we’ve got to throw. We’re not good enough to run the ball up and down the field. We’ve got to throw and run and mix it up.”Shaw has exceeded 270 yards in two of his last three games, going toe-to-toe with a pair of pretty talented offenses in Tennessee (356 yards) and Arkansas (272), and he’s completing 67.3 percent of his passes this season. But it’s the junior’s quickness to escape the pocket and get yards on the perimeter that puts him at his most successful, including last season’s 34-13 win over Clemson when he ran for 107 yards and passed for 210. Backup tailback Kenny Miles, the starter Saturday in place of Lattimore, also had a big game with 71 rushing yards.“We had trouble blocking Wofford last week and had trouble moving the ball on those guys,” Spurrier said. “We’re not a high-powered offense at all. We’re a slug-it-out type of bunch that can make a few yards here and there and who tries to make some first downs. Hopefully we can look like a better offense than last week when we weren’t very good.”The Gamecocks totaled only 293 yards against Wofford in a 24-7 win that included a defensive touchdown, and it would be difficult to imagine that USC could tally only 17 offensive points and hold a consistent Clemson attack under that. Of course the Tigers haven’t seen a defense as good as this one, other than arguably Florida State, but Spurrier knows he can’t put the entire outcome solely on the shoulders of his defense.“Our offense needs to play better,” Spurrier said. “We were pretty ugly last game. We didn’t block very well and fortunately Kenny Miles ran the ball sensationally (for a career-best 127 yards). We were able to grind out an ugly win over Wofford. If we’re going to have a chance (Saturday), we have to play well offensively, make a bunch of first downs while staying out there and scoring points.”